The sleeving looks really good also. Have you considered running any of it behind the motherboard?

Thanks! The pico input wires are really stiff, so I didn't want to run them behind the mobo and put a ton of stress on the termination points, that's why I went with a gentle bend up front, and approached the rear plug at a straight angle.

I remember my PicoPSU wires being stiff also. They've loosened right up now. Not sure if that's a bad thing though!

update: drilled 20, 5/8" holes on the bottom. 10 on each side of the grill...now she can really breathe! temps responded nicely, so I slowed the fans a bit more.

You must be "silent" now? I need to undervolt my fans on my white case as the motherboard doesn't run them slow enough, and I can't get SpeedFan or Fan Xpert to work.

xan_user wrote:

Mankey wrote:

Do we know the maximum allowable heatsink height (without fan)?

my cooler is listed at 44mm tall, I measured 26mm in headroom above it. so with my mobo i get about 70mm total clearance.

Thanks for posting this. I posted this on hardforum.com but forgot to post here. About 70-71 mm is what I found also. My drawings show 79.5 mm from the top of the motherboard to the inside of the side panel. Finding something that tells the height of the CPU off the motherboard is something I haven't been able to find, and I'm not sure if it varies from socket to socket.

I spent a few minutes trying out having the bottom vent the same as the top. I think I like the result. What do you guys think?

I'm wondering whether to include fan mount holes? 80x25 mm fans won't fit, unless you can find some 80x12 mm fans, or mount some fans outside the case! I think it looks nicer without the fan mount holes, but then you never really see the bottom of the case anyway.

Position is rough. If I have it positioned like this, in-line with the top, there's less room for case feet at one end. Probably still enough room though.

my asus board is the same way. i am using a y-splitter so both fans are controlled by fanxpert off the CPU header.

I know its only cosmetic( or Feng shui) but id prefer both grills be spaced evenly, with the same spacing distance to front as to rear. ( id like that on top as well.) I would prefer mounting holes be included.

another note on this case;one thing i really like about it is the way the back can now be the front. ive always hated digging around behind the pc to plug or unplug something...with this case its all just right there. I have it sitting on a small shelf to the side and slightly behind my monitor, with what would normally be considered the rear facing out, so the cables are kind of hidden, yet all the contentions, power switch ect. are still right at my finger tips. id often toyed with the idea of building a custom case with the back as the front, but my lazy ass never got around to it. THANKS!

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my asus board is the same way. i am using a y-splitter so both fans are controlled by fanxpert off the CPU header.

Good idea, thanks!

xan_user wrote:

I know its only cosmetic( or Feng shui) but id prefer both grills be spaced evenly, with the same spacing distance to front as to rear. ( id like that on top as well.) I would prefer mounting holes be included.

I'll look at this, and see if I can do anything. I originally didn't want to center the fans since I was trying to keep them over the motherboard as much as possible. Also, I wanted to keep the fan holes accessible (as requested by someone else).

xan_user wrote:

another note on this case;one thing i really like about it is the way the back can now be the front. ive always hated digging around behind the pc to plug or unplug something...with this case its all just right there. I have it sitting on a small shelf to the side and slightly behind my monitor, with what would normally be considered the rear facing out, so the cables are kind of hidden, yet all the contentions, power switch ect. are still right at my finger tips. id often toyed with the idea of building a custom case with the back as the front, but my lazy ass never got around to it. THANKS!

Haha... the case was designed so you have to get up every now and then and plug stuff in! Glad to hear my design has even more utility than I imagined!

I'll look at this, and see if I can do anything. I originally didn't want to center the fans since I was trying to keep them over the motherboard as much as possible. Also, I wanted to keep the fan holes accessible (as requested by someone else).

keeping fan holes accessible i can see (it was very easy to install the fans), but in a case this small, i honestly cant see fan position moving a half inch either way mattering at all as far as cooling goes, and any reduction in efficiency by way of slightly misaligned fan position, would be negated by having a larger intake grill. again centered grills is purely cosmetic. imo.personally my preference would be to just grill the whole bottom and top from front to rear for maximum airflow. - maybe with multiple fan mounting hole positions....? like one at each end, two centered but next to each other or just one centered. any air short circuits could easily be blocked.

@ mankey i see no reason why a quad core (-especially an i5 haswell using on-chip GPU) could not by run off a pico. - its the next upgrade i want to make....and i swore off using ATX PSU's years ago...

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@ mankey i see no reason why a quad core (-especially an i5 haswell using on-chip GPU) could not by run off a pico. - its the next upgrade i want to make....and i swore off using ATX PSU's years ago...

That's what I thought as well, as the Picos are advertised up to 160 watts. Most quad cores have a TDP of ~ 80ish watts.

I threw in a quad core unlocked into another build, and I was disappointing to see heavy +12v droop when putting it under load. Turns out that the Pico psu's are only rated to ~90 watts on the +12v rail, making turbo or overclocking basically out of the question. I had to end up disabling one of the cores just to get it to not droop under load.

So long story short. Quad cores don't work well with Picos. If someone says they do, then they're not looking @ the line droop.

thanks for the link/info, but im still going try it (thinking maybe i should get a 4670T @45w).

I'd bet it'd work with a 45watt TDP at the standard speeds. Just keep an eye on the sag when turbo gets engaged (may be hard to test - I'm thinking single threaded prime95 runs). Let us know how it goes!

I finaly recieved my case in the mail after a lengthy proxy process. At no fault of jamese, who sent the case out safely and promptly. I believe I am the first person in the E.U. with this case (though I may be mistaken). The rest of the components for my build have not arrived yet, but I just wanted to give some first impressions of the case. Had it not been for the fact that I ordered it here, I would have sworn up and down that it was a Lian-Li. The craftsmanship is exquisite, all the aluminium panels line up perfectly. No small feat I am sure. The built in fan grilll is a nice balance of functional yet not fragile. The case came with matching black screws, two HDD mounts based on the width, two options for feet, and a very nice power button. An amazing bundle for the price. I look forward to doing a build in this beatiful mini-monolith of a case, and I hope to use it for several more. I am thoroughly impressed. If you are building a mini-itx system and you dont need an optical drive, you need this case.

Considering this case project appears to have risen up here and been supported largely by the SPCR community, I feel compelled to offer a review, esp. as you're only one western province away. You probably can't afford to give one away for review, so SPCR will spring for one (unless any forum members want to offer up some donations towards this?). Anyway, please send me an email -- mikec @ u know where.

I've noticed that with the case flipped upside down, it definitely cancels out some of the noise coming from the case fan(s). What do people think about having case fans at the bottom instead of at the top? It could make already quiet fans silent.

While the case isn't designed/optimized for gaming/add-on GPUs, one question I have is how well it'd work having a fan blowing out (in a negative airflow config), right next to a potential GPU fan blowing the opposite direction, and whether the case fans would starve the GPU fan. Also, there's the question of whether this would work with a large GPU card blocking the airflow path.

Another question would be whether cooling would be affected since we'd be going against natural convection (in a negative airflow configuration anyway)? I did read somewhere on here someone say that case fans easily overcome natural convection airflow.

Ignoring the whole noise issue, in terms of appearance I kind of like the fans at the top as you can customize the look of your case by changing the colour of fans and fan mounts. With the fans at the bottom you wouldn't be able to do this, but the top may end up being cleaner without any fan screws/silicone mounts.

That's true. I'd just hope that it could work effectively either way, and that the CPU would receive sufficient airflow with the fans as intakes, and the GPU blocking the path. Maybe I should reverse the motherboard?! Then it'd be just like flipping the case upside down.

Last edited by jamese on Sat Oct 05, 2013 2:30 pm, edited 2 times in total.

For those of you curious about the wide voltage picopsu, I went that route, combined with a Cooler Master NA90. My original plan was to use an older AC adpater from the Dell Latitude laptops I have around, but unfortunately they use a proprietary plug, and adapters are extremely hard to find, or expensive enough to not be worth buying.

I'm a bit annoyed by the fact the motherboard has no vcore adjustment - I wrongly assumed it would given it is Z77, and that my H67 board had it.

Regardless, I attached everything to a kill-a-watt and maxed out the overclocking (non-K CPU, so max 1/2/3/4 core turbos are 4.3/4.3/4.2/4.1, or 4 bins above stock)

It can comfortably run the turbos with 1/2/3 cores. During benchmarking, it couldn't hit more than ~3.8 on 4 cores, and crashed when combined with GPU loading. This is probably the OCP of the picopsu kicking in. Because it does not simply pass through the 12v line, I think the regulation is quite good, and if you look at johnnyguru's review, he seemed reasonably pleased with the wide voltage option. The AC usage peaks at around 90-95W, but typically hovers in the 40-70W range. Idle usage isn't so great, at around 25W. For some reason, I had it idling at 18W before, and I don't know why it's higher now. The only things I recall doing between the two measurements was add the 92mm fan to the heat sink, and swap an i5 2400 for an i7 3770.

Once I capped the TDP in the BIOS down to 72W from 77W, that seemed to do the trick. Now, it can only hit 3.5 on 4 cores. If I had undervolting I'm sure it could do better. My case fans are intakes, and I think that helps because air is blown directly onto the picopsu to keep it cool.

I tried running the Shuriken with only 2 case fans and that caused overheating. Once I added the A9-14, no problems anymore. The (non-big) Shuriken is just small enough that in theory, I could add a PCIe card and clear the HSF. The Big Shuriken will not clear.

So, a regular quad core is feasible, if you limit the power consumption. You won't get your full 4-core turbo, but it comes close, and you can get your 1/2/3 core turbos plus overclocking.

@fuzzymath10, Interesting results. Sorry to hear things didn't work out exactly as you would've liked. Maybe someday Mini-box.com will find a way to improve their PicoPSU, or the processors will use even less power. How did you end up liking the case?

I have been playing around with a way to basically remove the bottom screws, or that whole bottom piece, and make the bottom the same as the top. I'm not sure yet if it'll be manufacturable though. The back becomes the removable piece, but it won't actually be removable anymore (unless I make the case larger). I'll have to sleep on it a bit. It's hard for me to give up the nice clean back, even if it's not looked at much - unless you're xan_user that is (with the back facing forward)! The current design is still my favourite.

Also regarding the "fans at the bottom" concept, it looks like in a worse-case scenario with something like a Sapphire HD 7750 LP GPU, there'd be about 4-5 mm of clearance between the 80 mm fans and the heatsink (the Sapphire 7750 LP heatsink varies in height). I get about 1.6 mm of additional clearance by making the bottom the same as the top.

@jamese the case itself is excellent. Really well-made. The fit and finish is high grade, and the only thing I'm wondering is how disturbing a switch would be on the top. I generally don't put my system to sleep, so I use the rear power button a lot. USB keyboards cannot turn the system on unfortunately (PS/2 ones can). Overall though, I'm very pleased.

@fuzzymath10, That's great! I'm happy you're pleased with the case, and that the quality is there for you. I use my rear power button a lot also. Have you considered cutting a hole (16 mm) in the top of your case? That's one option. You'd just have to ensure the drill bit didn't go walking across the top of the case! Maybe if you used a drill press you'd guarantee your success. If you are interested in doing this, I can post an image of what it would look like.

I'm needing to make some changes to the 2.5 inch drive bracket. The current one is nice because you can mount it any way you want, but there's a problem with the countersunk holes being too close to the bend.

I've been looking at a couple of options. One would be to change from a one piece bracket to a two piece bracket (imagine just the two sides of the current bracket). Another option (my current preference) would be to keep the C-shape bracket but change the dimensions, requiring it to always be mounted with the closed end out. Does anyone actually not want their drives covered? An example of this can be seen in this previously posted image:

So, a regular quad core is feasible, if you limit the power consumption. You won't get your full 4-core turbo, but it comes close, and you can get your 1/2/3 core turbos plus overclocking.

Awesome! Just curious - did you check the voltage of the separate lines via mobo software or whatever while loading the system? I wasn't getting any crashes when using the quad core + 7750, but the 12 volt line was dropping as lower than 11 volts. Very bad for the voltage regulators on the mobo.

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